Development Cycle Archive

I think it would be great if the movie characters were included in the path to jedi and even afterthey open their slot for more of a star wars like feel.You could also make it so you have to choose light or dark from the get go. Imps can interact with vader and his crew and rebels can interact with luke and his crew. Also you could give jedi like items as the player advances closer to opening their FS slot for instance things like hooded robes!!!!!, Darth Maul outfits, crystals, pearls, Jedi shoes whatever.

Keep it fun and adventurious Things like scouring a planet to find yoda for darth vader, or finding Yoda's lost lightsaber, finding hidden ruins where you can find clues about jedi and what it takes to become attuined to the force,things like that there is a massive game world at your finger tips it doesnt have to be grind proff after proff more adventure definitly needs to be involved.Like if you put certain poi's that people had to find to advance that would be hard and fun at the same time get people out of cantinas and out of camping the same spot everyday incourage adventure and exploration.

• the game neds to be cognizant of the amount of time per day that a player plays and adjust the time length of quests accordingly (more below on this)


• the game needs to be cognizant of the characters relative skills and adjust for that as well.


• the quests should have variable factors based upon percentagtes of play style (I.E. the player engages in a lot of PvP or the player engages in a lot of harvesting or crafting)

now for the first bullet: if a player plays 80 hours a week, then they hae the time to spend on significantly more time consuming quests. adjust the number of extra assignments and distances to travel, etc accordingly. for the second bullet, at the beginning at least characters should be able tyo solo these quests. and for the third bullet the quests should challenge players in their CHOSEN profession(s).

Holocrons should still play a major role in the FSCS path. I think that they should either give locations or contextural hints to completing the quest that is currently in progress. for example: if you are on a quest that gives you some vague information about finding the meat of a captive beast (refering to perhaps a rancor) a holocron may say to look in jabba's palace to find a captive beast or perhaps to look to the tamers on dathomir for clues. something that doesnt just give it away but makes it a lot more clear.

Part 2:

Jedi need quests that are based largely upon their path to becoming a master. if a person is doing a jedi related quest then a good reward that a jedi can get is jedi experience. Another good reward could be rare components to construct more durable light sabres (1500 SR steel anyone?) or perhaps repair kits that are crafted from a limited use schematic that has ZERO chance of failure.

The structure of jedi quests should be heavy with references to cannon known events and should directly relate to either EU information or information from the movie. As far as jedi quest givers... thats tough because if the quest givers locations become known, people will just camp them to make trouble for jedi. I think that jedi quest givers should appear randomly in the wilderness and cities just like hapens for other player characters, but if a jedi speaks to them, it should be immediately apparent that these quests are for a jedi.

thats about all of my thoughts for now. Good luck with all of this

Regards,

• 20pts for Novice Padawan


• 2pts for each Padawan level 1 box


• 3pts for each Padawan level 2 box


• 4pts for each Padawan level 3 box


• 5pts for each Padawan level 4 box


• NO Master Padawan box.. Total points IF you choose to fill them all is 76 pts..


• Elite Novice Box (4 different ones) 15pts for this box


• Elite level 1 box uses 5pts


• Elite level 2 box uses 4pts


• Elite level 3 box uses 3pts


• Elite level 4 box uses 2pts


• Elite Master box uses 1pts..


• Total points for EACH Elite Branch uses 72 points

Given there are a total of 364 total skill points in the new Jedi path.. obviously you can see you only get to fill part of it with the 200 skill points at your disposal.. Each Jedi now become different depending on what you wish to follow.. If the branches are correctly set up, which really isn't too hard, each Jedi will have pros and cons depending on their playstyle.. One Jedi might follow the path of being Master with the lightsaber, but be weak with force powers.. Or maybe be Master, or Strong with the force powers, but only so so with the lightsabers, One can be attuned to healing , or whatnot..

Just a thought

The path to Jedi should be based upon personal actions.

The choices you make in the gameshould determinewhich direction your character goes when seeking Force Sensitivity. This could be in the form of quests with multible outcomes or branches. The completion of each quest would grant "Points" towards the opening of the FSCS. Choosing one branch over another and completing itmay give you a lot of "points" towards opening that slot, some may give a few,and other branches could deduct "points". The player would never have a clue, of course, which one is doing what, even after it's completion. If you make the wrong choices enough times, and your point number again reaches zero, you have to start over. The various quests would present the player with choices based on a wide variety ofsubjects. Combat quests ( make them equal, but a difficult challenge,to the player's combat ability),philosophical questions and decisions (based on SW canon, both movie and EU), social interaction (like having torecieve a random "something" from a player Master and delivering it to a quest NPC...could be a Droid Crafting Tool rated 8 or better, maybe even a Mind Buff from an Entertainer), crafting, exploration ( badges come to mind), loot hunts, etc. The quests should be complicated, interwoven, and difficult to figure out. Forcing the player to use their intellect, initiative, imagination, patience,as well as skills from their chosen profession, would provide far more entertainment value than hologrinding through a dozen professions that they have no interest in keeping. Traits of a Jedi, they are? Hmmmm?

To help keep the Jedi Quests from being mapped out, while keeping Jedi rare, you firstneed to make the starting contact NPCs rare, random spawns. Say, once a day at random times of day on each planet, at random points, for a short period of time (like,3 hours or so).To make it even more of a challenge, when the quest-starting NPC enters the game,assign it a randomly selectedname from a list of 20 or more. That will keep people guessing, and searching, for a long time. You don't want to make this too much of a challenge, so you could add a clue to the NPC's name to alert a player to it's function, like "A Force-Sensitive Hermit" or something. You might even have a certain sound or maybe a subtle play of light turn on when a player is within, say, 64 meters of it. In addition, the quest results (the "points" given either towards or against FS) could be randomized to some small degree, as well. By small I mean, if there are3-4 possible outcomes to a quest, only one will give "Negative points", and one never knows which one it is. Some of the quests could have clearcut positive results based upon the player's choices, other quests should have no clear "right" answer (like many philosophical questions) and these are the ones that should be randomized. This way, there is no clear path to FS, other than just having to take the quests. With a randomized "negative point" result, no one will be able to map it out with any accuracy.

The challenge is in the creation of the 30+ quests that would have to be created (the number is just my suggestion). Making them interesting, immersive, challenging,and fun, is the hard part.

Force Sensitive Character Creation.

Premise

Under the original system of opening your Force Sensitive Slot it was understood that your primary character could NEVER become a Jedi. All that your primary character could do was to achieve a series of goals that once completed would allow the creation of a New Force Sensitive Character, that in time could become a powerful Jedi Master.

All very well and good, however, now that the system is being changed to a more “quest oriented” system, and assuming the original premise of a primary character “Unlocking” a secondary Force Sensitive Character is still the way this will work, then this raises serious questions about the types of quests these primary characters can pursue.

It would not really follow that a primary character would attempt to become Force Sensitive as that character would never be allowed to develop in this way by the very nature of the game mechanics, so strictly speaking any such quests would have to be of a nature unconnected to becoming a Jedi. It makes no sense and would destroy the continuity of the game to allow a primary character to undertake missions more suited to a secondary force sensitive character. How on earth could you justify quests where your primary character begins to unravel the mysteries of the force, and gradually develops an understanding through quests leading to “enlightenment”? The continuity fails at this point as your primary character can NEVER be FORCE SENSITIVE.

This would seriously reduce the immersion into the world of force sensitivity and as a result any kind of mysterious atmosphere generated by the path towards enlightenment would be lost. Clearly, we must find a way to reconcile the new game mechanics as these MUST be more directed at learning the ways of the force in order to immerse “Potentials”.

An Idea Re-born

There is a solution. While primary characters can never become Jedi themselves, as they are not force sensitive, there is nothing to stop them wishing to seek out the knowledge, or to put it another way, learn the theory. In the game quests they start out wishing to become Jedi themselves but must early on be told in their quests that the force does not come easy to them. They may then continue their quests in the knowledge that they may only ever learn the theory of the force in the way of a “Scholar”. Put another way, a historian does not have to make a Time Machine and LIVE the period he wishes to teach others about, he learns through his quests for knowledge so that he may teach others.

By now you may see where I am going with this. You Develop your Primary Character through the New Game Quests in order that he/she will become the Mentor that starts out and teaches some of the basics which your Force Sensitive Character will require. To be one with the force you have to consider the Force as almost a religion, and as such your primary character may indeed become very qualified, or if they fail in their quests, lose the faith so to speak. Religion requires blind faith, and as the Force is itself something that cannot be seen it is reasonable to allow a primary character to learn the ways of the force in terms of blind belief without recourse to useable skills for that primary character.

Once the primary character has progressed through all his “Knowledge Quests”, and has unlocked his force sensitive character, then the theory learnt by the primary can start to be passed on to the New Jedi. The secondary character still has to earn all the old XP in exactly the same way, but is able to refer to his Mentor the primary character for just the initial training to start him/her on the path to the force.

There is one problem that I foresee with the above idea. How do you allow both primary and secondary characters to be logged in at the same time in order for one to teach the other a skill? Well, there are two answers to this problem. Firstly, it is possible to run two instances of SWG on one machine at the same time. However, I can see that this would not really be approved of by the Dev’s and in any event is a somewhat cumbersome method. The alternative, and the method that I favour better is that once the primary character has completed his Knowledge Quests, the last act before opening a Force Sensitive Character Slot is a quest that demands that the primary character must place some kind of symbolic meditative place of worship, Jedi Shrine.
This shrine must be placed in a historically significant planet, such as Yavin 4. As a final act of faith all the skills learnt through the quests are symbolically written down and placed in/on the shrine in such a way that only a force sensitive character can unlock them. In reality, only your secondary character has access. This allows a level of continuity that is at present sorely lacking, and will allow you to feel that even though you are still maybe weeks or months away from opening up your Secondary Jedi Character that what you are doing is worthwhile to the success of your eventual Jedi Character.

The above is of course only an outline. I have not delved here into the specifics of the types of quests or knowledge quests to be undertaken. The specifics I can leave for someone else to pad out. What is important to note is that the above idea requires very little in the way of game altering mechanics, nothing that I can see in what I have proposed is contrary to the way the game works at present. To the Game itself the “Jedi Shrine” is a player placed building like any other, and takes up slots like any other, it also takes the place of the initial Jedi skill trainer NPC, in that you click on it and the knowledge written down becomes readable and allows you to learn a new skill, just like an NPC, but done perhaps in a slightly more imaginative way.

All I would ask of the Dev’s and the rest of the SWG community is that you stop thinking solely in terms of destroy/retrieve quests and start down the path of “Quests for Knowledge”. Knowledge is key and if done correctly could impart real benefits into the immersion of the world of the Jedi.

Phelan Kerensky
Eclipse

Master Artisan, Master Weaponsmith, Master Swordsman, Master Medic, Master Doctor, Master Combat Medic, Master Brawler, Master Image Designer, Master Marksman, Master Scout, Master Ranger, Master (and very tired of) Grinding.

I think we can all agree that having to blindly grind is booooring, but giving someone the right to wield a saber for just getting some easy badges or finding an NPC is way too easy. I think career mastery is a good idea to unlock the FS slot, but which careers should be by force.

For instance: Anakin and Luke are both great pilots, strong with the force. Theor piloting ability flows from the force. Can't someone's cooking ability flow from the force? : ) Seriously. When you reach master in a profession you should be given an option to take it a step further to enter a zen-like state and add that profession towards the several (more than 4) that you'll need for FS.

An example: Han has just mastered Carbineer and he gets a system email from a man named Xyl on Dathomir. It says: "Your skill has become legendary, but has your weapon truly become an extension of your will?" Han follows the WP on the email to the trainer who gives him very Carbine-specific challenges. He could tell Han to get over 5000 Carbine EXP in one kill, or have him rise to an ungodly level of Carbine EXP, he could even have him hunt a deadly beast using only his trusty carbine. (other players and weapon typeswould not harm it. Maybe load a sub-level only for the player) After these grueling challenges, Xyl would tell Han that "he shoots with the force as his guide," or something.

This system lets the player has unprecedented control over how he/she advances to Jedi and gives the whole thing a very personal and mystical experience. (even if you did just grind out harvesters for 20 hours straight)